Merry and Bright
by Lady Altair
Summary: Twelve Christmases in wartime. Things might be broken, but they can still shine. Oneshots, various characters, pairings, and eras.
1. Symphony

Prompt 1: Dance

I send more thanks to my lovely and ever-loyal reviewers. My most sincere thanks once again to TheOriginalHufflepuff and those at The Reviews Lounge. Your encouragement is very deeply appreciated. This piece is much happier than those before, I hope you all enjoy it.

* * *

_Symphony_

Penelope dances even when she stands still. There's grace in her every movement, even in the way her hair falls into loose curls across her back and over her shoulder. Even in this tiny flat that he's made her cage, she dances with smaller steps, to a slower beat and with a heaviness in her movement, but still she dances.

It isn't in her to ever stop and, when she touches him, Percy feels like he can dance too, that he can move his too-long, too-awkward limbs and be graceful alongside her.

She's waiting for him when he gets home, in a silky brown skirt with a soft pink cashmere jumper, a sheaf of paper in her hands and a lovely, soft smile on her glossed lips. She looks beautiful all for him, his Christmas gift in her hands.

She's written him a story, a story about Sir Percival the Valiant, Penman of Important Policies and Protector of the Lovely (And Intelligent) Lady Penevere. Another of her silly fairytales, her clever love letters to him; he keeps them all. He has some idea of binding them all together, someday, giving them back as a wedding gift, when (not if) he marries her, or as a gift for their children.

She reads it to him after dinner, as he lay with his head in her lap, the silk and her skin warm against his cheek. It's a Christmas tale, but he'll have to read it over; he's too entranced by the warm flow of her voice, the smooth caress of her hand under the collar of his shirt, to comprehend what she's saying.

He was too afraid to buy her a Christmas gift; he wants to give her something fine, something lovely…something a 'single' man has no business buying. It might be paranoid, but he's convinced that such a purchase would call suspicion on him, and he cannot afford that. If they watch him too closely, they'll know for sure, Fidelius or not. The Ministry is not a safe place to work any longer, especially when you're hiding your Muggleborn girlfriend away from the Commission in your flat.

It's a sad, lonely little Christmas, with nowhere to go, no family to see. There's only Percy and Penny, curled up together on the settee.

Celestina Warbeck is on the wireless, singing some maudlin song of warmth and love and Christmas, and it reminds Percy so of his mum, and of all the happy Christmases before, that he's dangerously close to tears when Penny pushes him up before standing up herself.

"Dance with me, Percy?" she asks, holding out her small, elegant little hand. His own, bony-jointed and freckly, swallows hers up as he swallows his tears.

And he's no good at dancing, too self-conscious to ever just let go, but he feels so close to her then, her head against his chest, one hand clasped with hers near her cheek and one against the small of her back, brushed by the curling ends of her hair as they sway together.

They dance to a wireless on low volume, but they don't really hear the music at all. Penny dances to the music in her heart; there are a few little notes of sadness and loss, but mostly it is woven of love and trust and hope. And Percy dances along, her great symphony in perfect harmony with the simple new melody his heart is composing.

Because, once upon a time, he lost the music, and he had to throw away the flawed composition of ambition and resentment and pride written in its absence. He composes anew for her; a simple, humble melody she can dance to. His once prized masterwork has been thrown aside, a discordant cacophony of selfishness; Penny could not dance to that.

He writes his heart around hers and watches her to learn the steps she knows so well. His Penny-princess dances to their hearts' song and, when she touches him, he feels like he can dance to it, too.


	2. Halo

For TheOriginalHufflepuff's 'The Twelve Fics of Christmas' challenge. She's been an awesome, loyal reviewer and I'm really excited to be taking part in this challenge; my first, actually. :o)

Prompt 4: Firewhisky

* * *

Halo

Fabian brings out the Firewhisky on Christmas Eve, after dinner at Molly's is finished and they've returned home to the warm little flat they keep near Manchester.

Dorcas manages to swallow a little of it; she can't bear the taste of straight alcohol. It's enough, along with the glasses of wine from earlier, to make the room glow in the firelight from the hearth, to make Fabian's touch on her skin more heart-stopping than usual.

She doesn't drink normally, but the lovely light feeling it creates makes her wish that drinking wasn't such a chore. Fabian laughs at her when she sways back onto the sofa, smiling dizzily.

She pulls him down on top of her, kissing him breathless, only to pull away when his hand drifts down to the back of her knee and tickles her. Dorcas shrieks and Fabian dives for her sides, tickling her mercilessly until she rolls off the sofa to get away from him and scrambles to her knees, crawling along towards the bedroom until she can get up the momentum to jump to her feet.

He starts after her, removing his wire-rimmed glasses from where they sat skewed on his face and tossing them away. His legs are longer and she was already breathless with laughter, and he rushes the door and tackles her onto the bed before she can slam it behind her.

When they make love, giggling and playful, they don't know it's the last time. Fabian doesn't know about the death that waits for him and his brother in an alleyway in Newcastle. Dorcas doesn't know how desperately she'll wish she'd been sober, that she could recall every detail and touch and whisper and giggle and feeling in crystal clarity. The Firewhisky will put a hazy golden halo on every memory and she'll regret that for the rest of her life (she won't regret for very long).

But in the moment, before grief and regret can tarnish the memory the moment will become, Dorcas is perfectly in love with her Fabian, with the shade of his dark red hair and the way he squints at her, as good as blind without his glasses but still desperate to see the shape his name makes on her lips. The world is golden and warm when he's in her arms then, his hair like spicy-smelling autumn leaves spread across her chest and she's sure she knows why they call it Firewhisky. Pale fingers lace through Fabian's beautiful hair and Dorcas wonders how they don't burn in the embers.

She finishes Fabian's bottle in bleak February, cold and alone and desperate to see the world in a colour other than grey. The grey just falls away to black.


	3. Fractions

Prompt 9: Quaffle

* * *

Fractions

Katie Bell's life is in fractions; in halves and thirds and missing pieces. Half-blind, half-deaf, half-beautiful, a third of herself and everything that completed her has gone missing.

They were three almost as much as George and Fred were two. Unlike in every way; a delicate dancer, a daring Amazon, and playful, unlucky Katie, but they moved together in the air like it was one of Alicia's choreographed ballets.

Katie Bell could never be a Seeker…there was so much of that position that was out of one's control, luck and positioning and a chance glimpse of gold. Speed and agility and a really wicked broom were to be valued, of course, but none of those helped you if the Snitch happened to smack into your opponent's forehead across the pitch. There was a lot of luck in Seeking; luck was not Katie's forte. The little black star burned on her fingertip from the necklace, the newest curse wounds across her face are testament enough to that.

And Katie didn't like to wait; Chasing was_now, _a great heavy red ball that stayed in your hands until you chose to throw it and not an ephemeral glitter of gold out of the corner of your eye (although George still holds that a bat in your hand and a Bludger on your arse are far more immediate). Not as glorious, perhaps, especially in the school leagues where the Snitch-catch almost always guaranteed victory to the captor, but Katie shone with Alicia and Angelina, their maneuvering skills unparalleled. They were made to shine together. It was a question of fractions, a third and a third and a third made a trinity in one; the Goof, the Grace, and the Gremlin.

George will never pick up a Beater's bat again in his life. He tells her this when she comes to his flat in late December in tears, let go from the Montrose Reserve team because she's no good half-blind, half-deaf, only a third of what she was. It's okay to let it go, he says, patiently, but Katie doesn't know how he goes on as only a half, how she can go on missing so much of herself.

She can't be a Chaser now. She misses that; not as much as the vision in her right eye, the hearing in her right ear, her sweetly pretty face…she doesn't miss the wind in her hair, heavy red leather in her hand as much as she misses the other two-thirds of her glory.

Katie wishes she knew how they fell; she's sure it was bravely. Delicate Alicia fell like the dancer she was, Katie likes to think, while Angelina kept her feet flat on the ground until she was forced to crumble down, fierce and beautiful until the end.

There are no tears for them anymore, she swears to George there in his kitchen two days before Christmas, they wouldn't want anymore. She came to his flat when Diagon Alley got to be too much, too crowded, too loud, when she walks into Quality Quidditch Supplies for gifts and there's the display she knocked into when she was here last with Alicia and Angelina and people stare at her half-ugly face and the world is wrong. She gave them a lot, warm salt tears from her left eye, purple-black tears thick and sticky like tar from her blind, cursed right.

Alicia would probably lie to her about the curse; It's not so bad, really, Katie, she'd say, and look for cosmetic charms to cover the ropey purple-black veins on the right side of her face (nothing works on curse marks, Katie's tried everything). Angelina would tell her she looked wicked, that the way the veins curled was almost beautiful, and that no one was ever going to fuck with her once she turned her liquid-black eye on them.

George has started calling her 'Black-eye Bell' (it's half-hearted, but George is almost halved, too) and though Katie misses 'Katiebelle' (Belle like beautiful, not Bell like her name) she doesn't say anything. That was the last time she cried for them, cried for all her teammates lost, over George's kitchen sink in the flat above the shop with her Christmas shopping strewn over the floor, while George sat silent at the table. Her black tears stained some of George's dishes; she'd thrown them out and bought him new ones, disgusted.

He's already home from Christmas at the Burrow when she drops in, weary of being the spectacle at her aunt's house (she's half-blind and half-deaf but she hears the whispers and catches the glances), poking around the back room of the shop. There are black-eyed susans tied up in a Christmas bow waiting for her and after she laughs at them, he has a beautiful bouquet of camellia behind his back (he was afraid he'd hurt her feelings, he admits; he must've asked the florist what flower meant 'I think you're beautiful' and Katie refuses to tear up and ruin them with her black tears.)

That night, sitting on the settee with Chinese takeaway, is the moment they've both been silently waiting for, when one will touch the other innocently and the other will touch back and hold on and the innocence will fall away and mouths will meet and both will hope this isn't just another game of fractions.

Katie stops George just for a moment, his red hair vibrant around his head, a familiar colour in her fingers. A third and a half don't add up to a whole, she says. This won't fix us, George, if that's what you're hoping.

There's some quip about his head for maths out of his mouth before he presses it back to hers. That's not why I want you, Katiebelle. (He forgets and whispers it in her right ear first and she has to tell him she can't hear him, try the other side and he goes white.)

She only half-believes him, but Katie Bell's life is in fractions. Half is perfectly enough, and five-sixths is almost a person.


	4. Window

Prompt 2, Mirror

My very special thanks to TheOriginalHufflepuff, Cuban Sombrero Gal, Bad Mum, respitechristopher, and Gaby-Black. I was getting a little discouraged with the complete lack of response, and your kind, wonderful words have really propelled me on! _Thank you!_

* * *

_Window_

The glare on the train window makes a mirror out of the glass, and all Daphne can see is the pale, gaunt contours of her own face in the raindrop-speckled black.

And she stares, straight into her own eyes. Her eyes are beautiful, she thinks with a little bit of what might pass for pride. She'd like them more if they didn't remind her so of her mother and two of her four half-siblings.

Daphne had a dream once, where Julia Williams-Prescott ripped out her eyes, her hair…every aspect of her face that Julia had given her firstborn (bastard) daughter, until all that was left was the bloodied imprint of some man Daphne didn't know but for a name written in a letter by his mother telling her that, though Hogwarts' registry might have her down as Daphne Greengrass, she was no kin of theirs.

It was a cruel, hard letter to read at eleven, newly arrived in an exciting new world only to find out not much was different; no matter the world, there was no family for Daphne. But the disappointment was familiar, constant; even at eleven, she had known little else in her life. It stops smarting so badly, after a while.

The words Seamus is saying from across the compartment are lost somewhere; words like 'brave' don't seem to be appropriately applied, and Daphne is wishing Seamus would just _fuck off_ so she could get to London and set about the business of having an unpleasant Christmas, cut off in the middle of a veritable sea of perfect holiday happiness, just like every year. She'll have her gifts to open; she'll have a lot of _things_, perhaps a new Chanel handbag and such. Julia might not like her, love her, whatever, but she likes, _loves_ to spend money. There will be a whole new wardrobe of clothes to wear, expensive things whose status is completely lost in the world Daphne lives in (she wears them anyway, swanning about in Muggle clothing in the Slytherin common room is rather entertaining.)

Slughorn wouldn't approve her request to stay. "No, my dear, I cannot in good conscience allow you to stay for the holidays. Not this year." Even with her painfully rehearsed smiles and a few well-covered bribes, there was nothing to sway him. And so it is that Daphne ends up staring hard at her own reflection in the December-darkened window, on her way to witness a happy family Christmas she'll never be included in, while _fucking Finnigan_keeps talking.

She casts her thoughts around, trawling for anything to distract her from Seamus' insistence on seeing her as something more than she is; Gryffindors are always so desperate to see selflessness and virtue in the actions of others. That she acted out of selfishness and self-advancement, and that any positive consequences produced for others were not intentional…a Gryffindor would never understand that, and Seamus is a Gryffindor to the marrow of his bones. Perhaps of the edging-on-stupid variety, but he is a credit to his house.

It's not surprising at all; her family hates her for what she is (a bastard, a shame, a witch) and Seamus wants to love her for what she's not, wants to seize on that little Gryffindor light he mistakenly perceived in her. That she should be loved for what she is seems faulty logic. Her eyes narrow, reflected in the sheet of glass; she came to the conclusion long ago that there must be nothing worth loving in her, but she still hurts a little when logic leads back to that. That doesn't seem to be healing with time.

She crosses her arms, the wand stuck in her jumper sleeve hard against her chest, and the distracting thought jumps in her head. She'll have to keep her wand locked up better this time, she thinks; her twelve-year-old half-brother had stolen and snapped her last one over summer hols, infuriated with his inability to perform a spell he'd looked up in a similarly pilfered spellbook.

"What are you doing for Christmas?" Seamus asks, changing topics in a bid for her attention, and he's so fucking _nice_ and desperately lonely without his friend and she's just too tired to scream at him to clear out and accept that she has no interest in him beyond the occasional frustration fuck in an empty classroom.

She stares at her dim phantom in the glass, lonely and angry in the rain pounding against the window. It's getting harder not to look at him; he's stubborn and she knows he won't leave and she also knows if she looks him in the eye she's going to want to pretend, she's going to burn away a little piece of her soul and self-respect (little as it is) to pay for the way he'll look back at her like she's worth something when she isn't.

He loses his temper at her continued silence. "What the _fuck_are you looking at out there, Daphne?" Her eyes meet his in the glass, alarmed at the use of her name; no one ever uses 'Daphne.' She's Greengrass, a pathetic joke of a name that's only hers because some official registry recorded her surname as that of her useless wizard father.

"Oh, fuck off, Finnigan," she snaps back, already aware it's all lost with those words.

He knows he's won, too, victory in his bearing as he shakes his long sandy hair out of his eyes. Out of his seat and kneeling on the floor before her, he asks again. "Christmas, Daphne. What are you doing?"

"I asked to stay," she replies simply. "I asked to stay." She rages internally at the quaver in her voice and tries to pull back away, to fly back through the window and be that reflection in the rain again, but Seamus' hands are on her knees and he's not trying to push up her skirt.

"You're coming home with me, is what you're doing," he tells her. And it's an order, really, Daphne reasons as she stands on the platform, picking at the stitching on her Louis Vuitton handbag and waiting for Seamus to come back with their trunks. It's not like anyone's waiting for her at home.

And really, she admits, curled into Seamus' bed (he's in with his six-year-old brother, she's never been in a house that didn't even have a guest room) that she's happier sniping at Seamus when he baits her, riling his temper until he glows red, and sneaking out of the house when they're both so shaking mad that they can't help but pounce on each other in the snow. And she's even happy when Seamus takes her out into the village and holds her hand and kisses her under the mistletoe hanging in the pub. Daphne is happier pretending to be whatever it is Seamus thinks she is. It isn't that hard, really; she acts like she always does and lets him see what he wants in her motives.

It's not like she left anything worthwhile behind when she stepped off the train, out into the rain and left her reflection in the mirrored window. The worst he can do is disappoint her; Daphne's known so much of that and it doesn't sting anymore.

She'll pretend while it lasts.


	5. Unplanned, Unexpected

I pulled an allnighter on Monday to finish an essay. Then, after turning in said essay Tuesday morning, I proceeded to sleep from noon to seven in the evening. Thus, I have _entirely_ fucked up my schedule and gone from functionally nocturnal to _actually _nocturnal. I will probably go to bed around 8 in the morning, when the sun is rising. Then I will proceed to sleep through the scant hours of daylight afforded us in lovely Northern England and wake in time to go out and drink. Such a productive life I do lead, now that Christmas holidays are here (and my flight home is not until the 22nd...) :o(

On the plus side, I have a lot of useless hours spent in my flat. Yay writing. And [/insomniatic ranting

Prompt 3: Surprise

* * *

_Unplanned, Unexpected_

Megan Caron Jones sees her first Christmas with week-old-eyes. She's curled into her mother's arms on 25 December, 1979 in a warm little cottage near Beaumaris, in the half-finished, unused nursery; Megan's cot is in her mother's bedroom because the unfinished nursery is a cutting, broken dream with rain against the window and shadows on the floor. And Hestia is _lost._

Megan_screams_ through the first hours of Christmas morning, inconsolable. Her mother cries too; Hestia cuddles her new daughter against her chest and mourns amidst the the detritus of remodeling, the paints and brushes and half-assembled furniture, all where Caradoc had left them months ago, when he'd gone out and not come back and left her so very alone with his daughter and left everything all _so wrong_.

Hestia's been waiting all this time, hoping he'd return. When she couldn't sleep for the discomfort of late pregnancy, when she was seized by the morning sickness that hadn't gone away, when her ankles swelled and her moods flew around like so many fleet snitches, when she _ached_for him so badly in a hundred thousand ways, she comforted herself; he wasn't dead.

Gone isn't dead, not in this case, she told herself for months. Except it is, really. Caradoc is a man who would come back to his family, if he could.

The note is still spellotaped to the door. **STAY OUT, HESTIA! IT'S A SURPRISE… **

She'd found it after work one night, taped to the door of the spare room at the end of the hallway. Caradoc had been mightily appalled when she'd asked after it. _Well, it's a surprise, cariad. _

_Surprise._Not a word that legal-minded Hestia liked to hear. _Surprise _was unexpected, unplanned. Everything unfortunate was always unplanned, unexpected. Hestia had been panicked when the pregnancy test came out positive (unplanned, unexpected). Caradoc, on the other hand, had been ecstatic; accidentally knocking up his girlfriend of nine months (what irony) was "the best thing I didn't mean to do, er, but, you know, _did_. Accidentally…but not like a--eh, a _bad_ accident!"

She loved him, she really did, but it had seemed at the moment that her planned, orderly life was _over. _There was no more being a kid after this, no more 8.75 years of irresponsibility before the settling-down stage of life; her parents were very keen to impress in her head. _Options,_her mum had kept on about, which meant_don't have this baby, you silly twit, you're twenty-two and stupid._

It was an accident (unplanned, unexpected) but, God help her, she loved Caradoc (and God knew _that _was not planned) and he already loved the baby. Her mum kept on about options, decisions, but for Hestia, there never had been one.

Caradoc had had a choice. She'd asked him to leave the Order; it wasn't a fair request, it was selfish, but Hestia wanted what she wanted. Hestia remembers so well the troubled look across his rough, handsome face.

He had been hard-pressed to find the words to refuse her, but he did; he quoted something (he did that when his own words wouldn't come gracefully, which was often). "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once...Hestia, I can't leave."

And she'd been furious with him, (she'd swept out of the house as much as a six-months' pregnant woman could _sweep_, ignoring his words behind her, _it's for you, it's for the baby, I love you both, you deserve a better world)_ then he was missing (which meant dead, but Hestia was rather comfortable in her denial) and she was still (very, very) pregnant.

On Christmas you tell the truth, Hestia thinks. Megan wakes, hungry, just after midnight on the twenty-fifth and Hestia lets herself be pulled into the nursery, through the door with the sign she's left up all these weeks.

And, secretly, desperately, part of her is convinced she'll walk in to find Caradoc rearranging things, have him look up at her and say 'Wherever have you been, Hestia? I've been waiting here for you…surprise!'

Instead, it's just a half-finished nursery, dark inside and painfully empty. The walls are a buttery yellow, Hestia's favourite colour.

Megan cries pitifully, soft sniffling newborn moans. Hestia's hand goes to her daughter's face, smoothing over her pink-cheeked new skin. Megan roots out her mother's finger and latches on, quieting more with each comforting suck.

And Hestia keens all the more as her daughter quiets, curling up into a soft blue armchair in the corner. _Caradoc was so brave, Hestia,_ Emmeline had said to her when Hestia had cried as she held Megan for the first time and realised that she would never know her father. The woman had meant it all as a comfort. _He did it for you, for his daughter, he loved you. You should honour him._

But Hestia doesn't want a brave, dead boyfriend. Megan doesn't need a martyred hero for a father. There's no cowardice in staying behind for your family, she thinks. It's just another, quieter type of heroism. And maybe Caradoc didn't understand that, she thinks. She told Emmeline so, and told the older woman never to speak to her again, never come back to the house. _Fuck the Order,_ Hestia remembers snarling, grief and hormones swirling together into a towering rage against the world.

Emmeline will come back; it will be more than a decade later. Megan will be fifteen, her father's mirror, and Hestia will say yes. Maybe she will understand Caradoc better, understand what he wanted so badly for her and Megan. Maybe she will just be old, with nothing left to lose and everything to protect, no longer content with the planned, linear life she'll have led since Voldemort was defeated and the world fell back into order.

But now, Hestia is only twenty-two, a mother, and alone at the end of the line and desperately hoping a railway replacement bus will be along soon. She's waiting for something she isn't even sure will ever, ever come. (It will, but she doesn't _know,_and that uncertainty is agonising.)

For the first time in her life, Hestia is counting on the unplanned, the unexpected, because it is better than ugly, empty linear life she can forsee, that she can plan and predict down to the day.

Hestia would kill for a surprise (but only if it's spelled C-A-R-A-D-O-C).

* * *

(If you're wondering, Megan Jones is a canonical yearmate of Harry's; in Hufflepuff, I believe. All speculation as to her relationship with Hestia contained within, however, is purely conjecture.) 


	6. Princess

I am going home on 22 December (!!!) and the thought of this excites me beyond sanity. This will be my last post (in all likelihood) before Christmas, since I have friends visiting over here who want to do the tourist thing in London and I'll be offline until at least the 23rd.

Hopefully, I will survive the godforsaken hellhole that is JFK three days before Christmas and not die of an aneurysm upon landing on home-state soil, and thus live to finish this challenge.

And so, Prompt 8: Photograph

* * *

_Princess_

Andromeda took only one thing from her family's house when she ran away to marry Ted Tonks, and she hadn't looked at it until now, sitting up alone so very early Christmas morning.

Andromeda always felt real next to her sisters. Bellatrix and Narcissa seemed almost like caricatures in some old novel: the wild, dark warrior and the pale, proud crystal princess.

And Andromeda was just…Andromeda. Beautiful, even next to her sisters, but _real_ in a way neither of her sisters were. Her hair was glossy earth-brown, not the dull satin-sheen of black that seemed to whip around Bellatrix even when the air was still, not the ice-blonde that Narcissa prized so highly. She occasionally picked at her spots, walked rather gracefully but sometimes tripped up staircases, her canine teeth were just a little longer than usual and her handwriting was average, normal, (Bellatrix wrote in stark, sharp letters, scratching so hard with her quill that she ripped through parchment, while Narcissa's careful hand looked like some kind of elegant Italian calligraphy, penned with just enough flourish to make an impression without overdoing it.)

She had loved…still loved (Andromeda wasn't quite decided on the appropriate tense) her sisters, but they were like other-worldly creatures, flawless photographic negatives of each other, black where the other was white. Andromeda was just somewhere else, in some other colour spectrum entirely, not even the shades of grey between them. She was real in some way they were not.

Lucius Malfoy told Andromeda on her seventeenth birthday that she was the loveliest of the Black daughters because she was no replica; she was not her mother's silver image like Cissy, not her father's obsidian one like Bella. Andromeda was herself and no one else.

She felt real when she heard those words from him, though she didn't believe them. (Andromeda will spend the rest of her life sure he lied, never knowing he meant them and that though he would marry, and even later love, her little sister, he'd loved her first in his own proud way). She felt more real when she wondered _do I really want that for my life? _for a little while after she accepted his marriage proposal. Cissy and Bella never seemed to question. Doubt and uncertainty flew through Andromeda's head in a dirty, rushing stream and she could not help but question. Question had turned to certainty and she had broken her word, run off and married Ted in sad, dingy office in the Ministry, wearing the robes she'd worn only hours before during her engagement ball to another man with only her wand and a single wizarding photograph in the pockets.

She'd always felt so very _real _amongst the princesses her family bred so proudly; she didn't feel real in this muggle house, surrounded by muggles who tried (and failed) not to stare at her, the strange, foreign princess in their midst. She'd been born as good as noble, the ancient Black blood in her veins. Black Princesses, Druella had called her three lovely daughters, the highest of the high.

Andromeda never believed that; she had never been a princess, she had always been _real._

Except she wasn't real, not here in this strange muggle house. She felt, perhaps for the first time, what it was to be a Black Princess. To Ted's family, his muggle parents and muggle brother and one witch sister, she was just some strange, beautiful woman he'd won and married; their talented son and brother had brought home a prize, and they were a little afraid of her. Ted hadn't explained, but his younger sister was a year younger than Narcissa; Janie had long carried the story of just how the marriage had come about.

She wasn't real here; maybe she wasn't real anymore at all.

Andromeda fingered the photograph, already smudged and crinkle-edged. Three little girls, the eldest no older than seven, grouped together, smiles yet to be sullied by tradition, expectation, and duty. Shadow, ice, and earth, three little princesses.

She put the photograph away, curling back into the too-small muggle bed set against the wall in Ted's childhood bedroom. Padding back across the ugly carpet, she slid back into bed, curling up against him until he woke enough to wrap his arms around her, mumble a 'Happy Christmas' into her hair and fall back asleep.

If she stayed away from him any longer, she might start to regret again. Those thoughts crept into her mind sometimes, when she was too long out of his arms, when the curious stares and whispers got to be too much and her reality started to fade, when she was just the phantom princess she'd always seen her sisters as.

She loved him, she _did, _and she hoped he would never stop reminding her of that, of _why _she had walked away, because if that faded, too…Andromeda cried silently into her pillow, tears that would dry by morning.

Sometimes, all she wanted in the world was to go home (because when she was a_Black_, she was _real_).

* * *

So, Merry's new random pairing...Lucius/Andromeda. Considering both pre-Ted and post-second-war scenarios. I'm excited. MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone! I hope everyone's holidays are safe and happy (-ier than the Christmases I write!) 


	7. RedBlackBeautiful

So I lied. Another update before Christmas. I ended up spending a lot of time in New York City, in both the JFK and LaGuardia airports. It was a lot of downtime between flights I was never going to get on and so I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor with my laptop.

And so, prompt 10: Phoenix.

* * *

_Red-Black-Beautiful_

Marlene McKinnon is the smooth, dangerous kind of red-black-beautiful that Sirius has always hated in women. He doesn't know why he likes her; sometimes, in flashes of terror, he sees his mother in her face (he's always reveled in self-destruction).

She's the real Phoenix in the Order, he thinks, a dark, daring woman who is going to burn herself into ashes in the fight, just to rise again in greater glory. She's a darker Gryffindor than James and his golden, brash bravery; she fights because she's in love with it. She'll hold to the ideals, preach wizarding equality for all blood-status, but that's not why she laughs as she duels, tosses her lovely wild waves of dark hair over her shoulder and looks at death and _laughs._

He bums a cigarette off her during the Order's Christmas party; mostly he just wants a reason to speak to her and she looks perfectly beautiful in the winter evening, smoke blown smoothly across glossy burgundy lips.

A cigarette turns into a pack (and later an addiction), a few drinks at the Muggle pub Marlene likes in Liverpool, a joint in the kitchen of her flat, and all their clothes littering her bedroom floor.

The way James talked about losing his virginity with Lily on their wedding night (all romance and candlelight) could not be farther from the night with Marlene; twenty-seven to his twenty, drunk, high, and no blushing virgin. Sirius might've thought she stole his virginity if he hadn't liked it so much, liked tangling his hands in her red-black hair and pulling down and _owning_this beautiful monster just for a moment before she takes herself back (and, piece by piece, steals him back with her).

There's a phoenix tattoo on her lower back, on the right side as her waist flared into her hip, a rising phoenix in black and red etched into the soft, elegant curve. He likes to trace his hand over it while they talk in bed.

It's all something of a secret; Marlene isn't exactly running about giggling to her girlfriends (if she has any) and Remus, Peter and James have all been brought up with a saccharine idea of love and women and he'd rather not know what they have to say about the whole affair.

They'd probably think he was just being dangerous, rebellious, motor-bike owning Sirius, shagging some similarly dangerous, rebellious older woman to complete the image. He knows they wouldn't understand what he saw in her, what she saw in him, and he's glad they wouldn't.

He almost thinks he loves her (he knows it's stopped being just about sex and shared addictions, although what it's started being about isn't something he's quite figured out) but if he does, it's not anything worth pursuing. They're both proud, angry, selfish children.

When Marlene falls in a flare of verdant light, Sirius expects her to rise again. He expects her to spring out of her shell in a blaze of black and red and make herself anew, because surely that green isn't enough to extinguish the black fire burning in her eyes.

She's a Phoenix, and that's what they do, isn't it?


	8. 100 Christmases

In all honesty, this might not make sense if you've not read _A Good Way to Fall_. I tried to make it stand alone, but I'm not sure how successful I was. The first draft felt like a lot of info-dumping, so I fixed it and it's a lot more dependant on the other fic as a result. Oh well.

By the way (though this has nothing to do with this fic in particular, but I need to say it now, and will be reiterating it as time goes by) I'm generally NOT paying attention to any of the post-DH JKR interview material. A lot of it I just don't like, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not official canon. NO THANKS WEASLEY FAMILY TREE.

Prompt: All Was Well

* * *

_100 Christmases_

Alastor visits his wife's grave every year on Christmas, the anniversary of her death. Every year he wonders (not with horror, not with hope, but with a resigned curiosity in regard to fate's design) if it will be his last year to sit beside her grave and lay poinsettias and evergreen boughs across the cold marble.

He's lived almost a century without her; 25 December, 1909. He had five Christmases with her; they live in beautiful golden memory in his Pensieve (his memory's started going; he misses the easy recall, but the thought of them fading, of losing them, losing _her_, is too terrifying to risk.) He wonders if he'll spend a hundred Christmases without her.

He lives in the memories every Christmas, a phantom voyeur of his lovely Kitty and some strange, handsome young man long since lost in the reflection in his mirror.

Alastor's favourite, strangely, is the very last, watching Kitty wake for her last morning, her long brown hair in a frowsy tangle around her face, her left hand (with the lovely gold rings that said _I belong to you_) smearing across her sleep-swollen face.

He can't regret anything about the last hours he spent with her; the two of them lounging in bed all day until time came to rise and ready themselves for the Auror's Christmas Ball. She'd worn her Christmas gift all day, a beautiful ruby and diamond necklace, and cooed over the blanket his mother had sent for the baby (Alastor had thought that giving Christmas gifts to a fetus was ridiculous, but the reality of the tiny violet and cream quilt had been only slightly less thrilling than the fluttering movements he felt when Kitty pressed his hand onto the swell of her stomach.)

_I love you,_ he'd said a hundred times that day, combing through her long hair with his fingers, pressing his cheek against her stomach, kissing the freckles across her shoulders. _I love you._

And then it all went so fast. They'd dressed, Kitty had complained about her size, he'd reassured her (_you're beautiful, I love you_, the last time she'd ever hear him say those words). And then they'd gone, leaving the bed unmade behind them (it smelled like rosewater and Kitty, and he hated the smell until it began to fade.) Kitty had never come back.

It had been a cruel day to lose her, to lose _them,_but Alastor can appreciate it with time. There were no regrets, no ugly, angry words to agonise over. It was a golden Christmas day; after the ripping grief, anger, loss…after it all faded (because everything fades in time) there was only gratitude for that last perfect day, those few hours when all was right with the world.

He leaves another wreath on her grave on Christmas morning, 1996. He doesn't know it will be the last; at this point, he's sure that one-hundred Christmases is his poetic destiny, he's lived through so much already. Alastor only had five Christmases with Kitty; he'll only spend eighty-six without her.

Somehow it all balances out in the end. Everything tends to.


	9. For the New Year

Prompt: Victory

* * *

_For the New Year_

Victory, Lavender reads in Neville's palm.

_Victory._

She reads for Neville on their last night in Gryffindor Tower; the Hogwarts Express leaves tomorrow morning, transporting all out of the grim castle to a grim, grey holiday.

She catches him in the common room late in the evening; a Christmas present, a prediction for the New Year, she offers. He would refuse (it seems silly) but this year has worn on Lavender more than most and this seems like a piece of the old, of what was before. He never thought he'd miss the insipid schoolgirl giggling.

He wears his usual, a black eye and a slash across his cheek. Lavender's stayed out of trouble lately; her hands aren't bandaged and he can see the round pitted scars (Amycus has been lecturing a lot lately, she hasn't had to refuse to curse anyone, she hasn't had her hands nailed down to her desk in weeks).

Her fingertips are soft on his palm tracing the lines, her carefully-arranged brown curls falling down around her face as she scrutinises his hand.

Neville doesn't really believe her; Divination seems like bollocks, a bunch of lines in his hand don't know that everything's going to turn out all right. But then she looks up at him, trust in her eyes.

She kisses his palm and says again, _victory,_a small, smile curling at the edges of her pink-frosted lips.

_Merry Christmas, _she smiles sadly as she wanders back up to the girls dorm, 'to pack.'

And then Neville realises it really isn't about Divination at all.


	10. Sunshine in the House of Black

Prompt: Kiss

* * *

_Sunshine in the House of Black_

There's no affection at all present in this Christmas Day wedding; the chill in the room is more than just temperature and Lucretia Prewett mourns for her baby brother (probably more than he mourns himself; Orion's never seemed to care about anything enough to mourn it.)

Lucretia is every inch a Black, cold and elegant in form and face. Her two darling children don't have a single whisper of the blood in their looks or temperament. They are Prewetts in every facet, all lovely, warm little echoes of her beloved Ignatius. Every time she thinks about it she wants to dance for joy (Nate taught her how to dance from the heart, so unlike the elegant mechanizations of the body the Black daughters were taught).

It's possibly the only reason she might want to dance for joy on such a day. Orion's wedding day is the dreariest Christmas she could have imagined; Black weddings tend not to be joyous occasions and it's as though Walburga picked the date to ruin the holiday for everyone involved.

This wedding was doomed from the start; Orion's marrying the miserable, distant cousin Lucretia used to call 'the charcoal harpy' and Walburga is even less pleasant as a woman than she was as a schoolgirl.

A double Black wedding, decorated in green and red (the shades are all wrong for Christmas, dreary and dull; the red of the dress robes she is wearing is the colour of old, clotted blood, not the joyous crimson a Christmas wedding should have). There was never any hope for it to be a joyous celebration; as far as Lucretia can tell, her younger brother doesn't even _like_Walburga (who would?) but is, as ever, content to apathetically go along with the entire thing. Orion hasn't expressed his opinion on anything since…well, _ever,_really.

Four-year-old Molly was pressed into service as the flower girl, in a little robe set of ugly green. Walburga had sneered at Molly's dark red hair; she'd wanted her flower girl to wear red, "but obviously the… girl," (the harpy had had the word 'brat' on her tongue; Lucretia would've struck her if she'd dared speak it) "has ideas of her own" (as though Molly had grown her pretty red hair out of spite.)

Lucretia can hear Gideon crying distantly; Nate had seized on the opportunity, leaping out of his seat at Gideon's first sniffle and taking his infant son out to cry in the entrance of the hall, sparing himself any more of the ceremony. Right now, holding a screaming Gideon sounds infinitely preferable to her current position, standing up next to Walburga, her hand on an impatiently squirming Molly (she hates to scold, Molly's only four and shouldn't have to stand up here during the whole tedious ceremony.)

The kiss that ends it all is the worst excuse for an embrace Lucretia's ever seen, with thin, tight dry lips pressed firmly together for the shortest of moments, but at this point she's feeling so charitable at the end of the marriage ceremony that she claps along with everyone else.

Nate finds her as everyone wanders into the adjoining hall, to the reception in the ballroom. Gideon's tears have faded, leaving his little face still scrunched and red, and he reaches out flexing fingers to his mother, blue eyes wide and begging, his bottom lip quivering in cruel, emotional blackmail. Lucretia takes her newest baby from his father, cuddling him against her shoulder and pressing her nose into his thin, downy red hair.

"Was it was painful for you as it looked, Lucy?" Nate jokes, that lovely grin splitting his kind, handsome face and Lucretia is suddenly glad glad _glad_ for all the hundred thousand things that conspired to bring them together, that spared her this joyless, dismal wedding and the joyless, dismal life that will inevitably follow.

She just grins back, the wide Prewett grin she learned from her husband, wraps her free arm around Nate and kisses him hard on the mouth (Molly hides her face in her skirt, the ugly fabric muffling the long, insistent _ewwww_ at her parents' display of affection, while Gideon bats at their cheeks with weak baby hands, giggling.)

Nate grins again as she pulls away, leaving her hand cupping his jaw. "Merry Christmas to you too, Luce," he laughs, the slightest tinge of red around the tips of his ears.

And Lucretia laughs (there's not much laughter at a Black wedding, it echoes a little loudly in the emptying hall but she doesn't really care.) "Thought someone should get a good kiss today, Mr. Prewett."

And he smiles again, love and humour and adoration in his eyes, and there is sunshine in the House of Black.

* * *

So, apparently I am not incapable of happy fluffiness? News to me! (I'm really really pleased with this, because fluff is not my usual, but I LOVED writing this and may try to do it more often!)

Oh, no. Another super-random OTP! Lucretia Prewett/Ignatius Prewett. And if we rock that with Cedrella Black/Septimus Weasley, we have the forerunners of Weasley Love!


	11. Silver Mist

Prompt: Patronus

See! I told you I'd finish eventually!...eventually! And if you're wondering where the twelfth is, look under my profile. It's called 'Red Ink Remains' and it was so special to me I posted it on its own, so check it out!

* * *

_Silver Mist_

Fabian doesn't have favourites amongst his nephews—favourites aren't fair, and he loves all of Molly's little boys enough to be fair.

But it's hard, so hard, not to feel a little bit closer to Percy. Dorie thinks it's because the toddler, given a few years and a pair of spectacles, will be Fabian's mirror; thin and tall and handsome, with the same shade of auburn-red hair, unlike the ginger-orange that Arthur's given to all the others save Charlie.

It's true enough, but he thinks it to have more to do with Percy's adoration of Dorcas. He sits next to her at Christmas dinner, curls up in between them on the settee after pudding, his eyes always glued on Dorie like she's the most magical, beautiful thing he's ever seen. When Dorie's Patronus, a silver gazelle that speaks in her voice, leapt into the Burrow's kitchen one afternoon on delicate long legs with a message for Fabian, it was instantly Percy's favourite animal. She conjures another on Christmas afternoon to amuse the small boy and he runs around after it on short legs until he's exhausted and Fabian is only slightly miffed that his greyhound Patronus doesn't inspire the same adoration in any of the boys; even he'll admit that Dorcas' long-horned guardian is much flashier than Sir Harrington (only Dorie knows that he's named his Patronus such a poncy thing as 'Sir Harrington' but it certainly fits the distinguished dog…he had to name Dorie's 'Lady Pointy'—for her horns—because she refused to choose a name and he's _sure _she'll never tell anyone that, and he's glad to have such a silly, pointless secret with her.)

The entire situation is a little bit like Fabian imagines their own son will look up at her, how their own son will look so much like him. The only discordant note is the lack of Dorcas in Percy's face; Fabian thinks her eyes are so lovely, and the shape of her nose, and is rather in love with the idea of a little flock of red and gold-haired children with blue and hazel eyes, a new set of cousins for his nephews.

Percy passes out from the exhaustion that Christmas inspires in small children on Dorcas' shoulder, clutching the soft cloth book she gave him in one hand, a handful of her new, scarlet-red Weasley jumper in the other. She's silent next to him, her hand stroking Percy's auburn curls, wonder and warmth and complete contentment in her face.

When Molly takes Percy up to bed, Dorcas pulls Fabian into the empty kitchen. Her eyes are bright. _I want a baby, Fabian. I…I want to have a baby with you. I don't want to wait anymore._

He's so shocked (it seems so sudden, they've had a few scares and Dorcas always cried, _not now, we're not married, there's a war_…there's a hundred thousand smart reasons to wait and Dorie knows them all) that all he can say is, "But we won't be married until June." _And who knows if this war will ever end, or if we'll even win?_ is what goes unsaid.

"And I can't think of a better way to walk down the aisle than carrying your child," Dorie smiles, her lips painted a pretty Christmas red to match her jumper.

And Fabian is beside himself with the picture. _Let's leave now, _he begs, because he's that kid, waiting by his bedroom door at three o'clock Christmas morning, unable to stand the waiting. He can barely get through the day without wanting her, but this won't be _just sex_, this is trying to conceive a baby and somehow the idea makes it impossible to keep his hands off her, even in Molly's kitchen.

_We can't be rude, Fabian. You can knock me up tomorrow. I said I didn't want to wait, but I'm not that impatient!_

She laughs and he scowls, and they'll wait.

It will be one of Fabian's many regrets on that last night, _that waiting, _in those last few seconds when the hailstorm of all that he's left unfinished will spin around him like thousands of tiny fireflies in a hurricane, all the little lights of possibility that extinguish as the dark roar of a black ocean sweeps in to take him, to pull him away from Dorie and Percy and Molly.

Only Gideon goes with him into the dark, holds his hand until the transitory grey comes to light and all regret stays behind.

Dorie doesn't cry when they pack the brothers into boxes and bury them in the cold January earth, only curls her arms more tightly around a black-clad Percy, presses her face into auburn curls and pretends, in the all-too-short and excruciatingly painful moments before Molly puts the twins (Frederick Fabian and George Gideon, the barbed wire curled 'round her heart tightens at the sound of their names) to bed and takes him back, that he's really hers and that there's still a living piece of Fabian in the world.

Because there's only her and no baby, no Fabian, and she clings at a borrowed family, to a little boy with auburn curls who will never look at her with her own hazel eyes (or even Fabian's pale blue Black eyes) because they are brown like Molly's.

She has a hard time conjuring a Patronus any longer; even when she succeeds, dredges up a happy memory from her well of sick loss and her lovely silver gazelle materialises, with one glance she can hear Fabian's laughing insistence that her Patronus have a name, and Lady Pointy (the stupid name is lodged in her head, a dead joke that doesn't mean anything to anyone else in the world because Fabian is not in it any longer) dissolves in form to silver mist and then nothing at all as Dorcas loses hold on her memory and it slips away into grief.


	12. Red Ink Remains

_Red Ink Remains_

_(Prompt: Heart)_

_

* * *

  
_

Fred Weasley's card tricks are like _real_ magic. He finds the Queen of Hearts for her over and over, smiling broadly across the counter as she examines the cards again in disbelief.

The last time he comes, one cold day over Christmas holidays, one day without his twin, he smiles at her and leaves the Queen of Hearts on her counter, says to keep it safe, he'll be back for it.

She laughs, turning the playing card over in her hand as the bell over the door signaled his exit. She might just be a girl in a card shop, but she knows the likelihood of _that. _She knows boys.

She keeps it anyway, tapes it away in a photograph album somewhere. He never comes back, of course. And she never knows why, and never wonders, either.

She moves away from Ottery St. Catchpole, marries, has children, grows old. But she remembers sometimes, long long years after he walked out into the feathery falling snow, flipping through the album, remembers precisely the shade of his red hair and the crinkle of his eyes and his perfect, mystifying card tricks and the way he made her smile.

To her, he was never anyone more than a nice young man who made her laugh one day while the snow fell down. In a world she'll never know, he is a hero. His name is etched on monuments that will stand so long people will scarcely remember what they were built to celebrate, to mourn. He just made her laugh; maybe that's just as worthy of memory.

The card grows yellow with age, taped amongst unmoving photographs, but the red ink remains.

* * *

I couldn't stand leaving this 'unfinished'--so I posted this under here, as well as in its own right.


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